Another Coffee
by MsCongeniality
Summary: A chance encounter at an airport, and catching up between old friends. Michael, Robin. Postseries with mild spoilers for end of series.


_A/N: This story was written for the New Year's Resolution 2005 challenge in the **Yuletide** community at LiveJournal. I need to give special thanks to **WiccanMethuselah** and **KaguraTheWind** for their help in preparing the story for posting, and extra special love with chocolate sauce for **Salmastryon**, who deserves chocolate sauce._

**Another Coffee**

Michael sat back in the stiff plastic chair, doing his best to sprawl despite the limited space in the small, cheerlessly generic café tucked alongside the walkway between security and the gates. The international terminal was quieter than the main airport, but not by much, and it seemed as though the travelers here were sucking up more than their fair share of wireless bandwidth. With an exasperated sigh, he sat forward again, hunching over his portable keyboard as though his hovering presence would encourage the connection to move faster. Despite his preoccupation with the screen in front of him, he suddenly realized he was being quietly addressed and that a cardboard cup held in a delicate hand had entered his peripheral vision.

"I'm sorry miss, but I didn't order another…," his irritated reply died on his lips as he looked up into the face of a ghost.

Robin.

Her hair had been dyed to a light brown, but the way it hung in wisps framing those clear green eyes was unmistakable. She smiled, and her lips seemed to be moving, but in that initial moment of shock, he wasn't able to connect the sounds with concepts.

"…ther coffee."

Michael blinked, then closed his mouth and opened it again before finally managing an undignified "Hunh?"

Her smile broadened, bringing lines into relief at the corners of her eyes as she replied. "I said, you must have been working pretty intently. You were so wrapped up and you'd been there a while, it looked like you needed another coffee."

His eyes went to the empty cups in front of him, then back to her face. "Uhh…yeah, I guess you could say that. I wasn't really working on anything important, though."

Suddenly, as though he had come to the realization that this was a social situation that required action on his part, Michael awkwardly pushed himself back from the table and held out a second chair to the woman standing before him. "I'm Michael, Michael Lee. Why don't you join me Miss…," he let his sentence trail off and he smiled, relieved that he was finally overcoming the initial shock enough to act a bit more discreetly.

"Sara. Sara Arai." She shifted the weight of her shoulder bag and glanced around the café, quietly assessing the seated patrons. "Actually Mr. Lee, I–"

He raised a hand and interrupted quickly, "Michael…call me Michael."

She nodded and continued with a small smile, "Michael, I just spent several hours on a cross country flight and have another long trip to look forward to. Would you be interested in taking a walk through the terminal with me, instead?"

He watched as her eyes moved across the café again, noticing them light upon one corner in particular, and his tone turned flat as he replied "Yeah, right. Good idea. Just give me a minute to pack these things up and I'll be glad to stretch my legs."

The span of a few minutes found them making their way down the concourse at the center of the terminal, luggage towed in one hand and cups of coffee in the other. At first they walked in companionable silence, occasionally sneaking glances at one another but otherwise keeping their attention focused on the passengers around them. Once they settled in to a comfortable pace, Michael broke the silence between them, speaking almost hesitantly.

"So…Sara Arai, eh?"

Robin cast her eyes downward, turning her head away from him slightly as she replied. "Yes. _Mrs._ Sara Arai." She looked back at him and said a bit more hesitantly, "Though, you can call me Sara if you like."

He looked away and his tone turned flat again, "Oh." Then, almost as if he were testing the word, "Mrs."

Her voice and her expression were both a bit more strained as she pushed the conversation forward. "Yes, I'm going to meet…my husband, actually. We're moving to a new city and he went on ahead to make arrangements."

A long moment passed before Michael replied, and then it was still in that same flat tone. "I…see." He turned to her and continued, "So have you and…Mr. Arai been married long?"

She turned away from him again, her voice taking on the quiet tone of someone who wants to avoid conflict as she started "Michael…."

"What?" he interrupted sharply, gesturing with his half-filled coffee cup. "It was a legitimate question. Have you been married to _him_ for long?"

Robin turned her face back towards him and spoke in that same quiet tone. "No. Marriage was a…a recent development. It just seemed to make so many things easier, especially in some of the places we were traveling through."

"Plus you wanted to marry…right?"

Her tone grew more introspective than hesitant as she replied, "I don't know, perhaps. Anyway, I couldn't continue to stay with him…like that without marrying. It wouldn't be right." She paused and looked away from him again, shifting her attention back to their surroundings as she spoke. "Our relationship is an odd one, it always has been. In many ways, probably in most of the important ways, he's not my husband at all, but still my guardian. He's still my watchdog."

Michael watched her from the corner of his eyes as he addressed his response to the floor in front of them. "I…see." He pursed his lips slightly and then continued, "He's been taking care of you though?"

Robin's solemn expression lightened into another small smile, and she nodded. "Yes, he's the best protector I could have asked for. He's taken care of me through the worst of…," she paused, reconsidering, and turned to try and look Michael in the eye. "We've been through so much together now, he and I. I'm not sure we'd even know what to do without one another anymore."

Michael responded by looking away, his fixed gaze moving across the passengers seated at their gates as he and Robin continued their walk down the concourse. Finally, after a long moment of silence, he responded. "You don't have…," he paused and turned back to look at Robin once again. "You don't have to be so dependent on him, you know." His expression remained neutral, but his tone took on an edge and he spoke as quietly as he could, "You're not on the active hunt list and you haven't been for some time."

She shook her head in response, her voice took on an entreating tone. "Michael, it's not like that…not dependent. If you could…if you could see us together, how we work together now, I think you'd understand."

He frowned slightly, "Maybe. Then again it's probably better that I just met you, I think."

"Perhaps. Anyway," she said looking pointedly around them, "That's more than enough about me. I've probably said too much already, in fact." She paused and turned to him again with a grin. "Surely you have something you can tell _me_ about."

Michael seemed to start slightly and when he spoke it was in bland tones, "Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right." They walked the next few steps in silence before he began speaking again. This time his voice took on more of its normal tone, though he still spoke quietly. "Well, there's Master, and he's just about the same as ever. I only see him every once in a while these days, though. Miss Doujima I don't know anything about, she got transfer orders a little more than six months after…anyway, I haven't tried to find her."

He paused a moment and leaned away to toss his empty coffee cup into a trashcan as they passed, then continued his quiet recitation, his tone taking on warmth as he spoke. "Haruto is leading the STN-J field operations now, he's really grown into an excellent squad leader; and Miss Karasuma is working with me over at Solomon Asia. Well, not _with_ me, but we both work there. She went over about a year and a half ago actually."

Robin reached over to throw away her own coffee cup. As she straightened up, she looked back to Michael, interrupting him "And how about you?"

"Oh. Well, I've been there nearly a year myself. I kind of miss the freedom of a field office, but the resources more than make up for–"

Robin gestured with her hand, giving a short wave in the air in front of them. "That's not what I meant, Michael. How about _you_?" The question seemed to hang in the air, and the two continued walking in silence. Finally, Michael began to speak in a quiet, serious voice.

"When you knew me, I was tied to that place. The Chief gave me the chance to slip my leash, but since then all that's really meant was that instead of sleeping at the office, I found another place to crash–and until I changed jobs, I still slept at the office at least once a week anyway. I keep odd hours, I'm still at work all the time and I don't really socialize much outside of the organization." He smiled self-consciously and raised his free hand to rub at the back of his neck.

"Actually, they pretty much forced me to take some time off and I didn't know what to do with myself. I came back here thinking I'd go see relatives or some of the people I knew growing up, but it was all kind of empty. I mean, they'd worried and stuff when I didn't come back from that semester in Japan, but we'd all moved on and it was like there wasn't ever anything there to really _get_ back." His ambling gait faltered and he stopped walking, just to the side of the concourse. He lowered his hand, and turned his gaze towards the ceiling. "To be honest…this entire trip, the only moment that felt like home was a quiet voice offering me coffee."

Robin sighed, "Michael…."

He turned to look at her once again, "Look. We were young and stupid and in over our heads with an organization that's been running roughshod over people's lives for generations. Maybe it was dumb of me not to say anything or act on how I felt, but–"

Robin cut him off sharply, "No." Her tone grew quiet once again, "No, that wasn't dumb. We _were_ young and stupid and it was all so dangerous. Not that things are much better now, but emotions only make all of those things more difficult."

Michael looked away again, and his flat tone of voice returned "Is that you or Amon speaking?"

"No, it's not Amon, it's me."

He turned back to face Robin and met her eyes as she turned towards him. Her gaze was steady and her voice firm as she continued, "Since I left the cloister, I've learned a lot about emotions and I came to that conclusion on my own. Maybe I didn't get there the easy way, and certainly _not_ because I was with someone who was cruel or who didn't care about my feelings. I've spent years on the run and it puts everything into a different perspective. I learned that, whether it's returned or not, love gets strained by danger or by action. It's put in jeopardy by each day that you have to worry about that person's life and it's killed by inaction or disregard."

"No," she continued with a small smile. "In the lives we've been given, emotions only make things more difficult."

He looked into her clear green eyes, not sure what – if any – response he could give. The silence between them became awkward, seeming to blanket the concourse, reducing the hum of activity to a mere buzz until even that was shattered by the crackle of a mechanical voice, breaking its way into Michael's consciousness and providing what might be the only possible answer. He winced slightly and his eyes moved, almost involuntarily, in the direction of the ceiling and the public address system.

"That…that was my flight they just called." He held out his free hand and offered it to her, "Will you walk with me to the gate?"

Robin inclined her head briefly then reached out and took the proffered hand. The two of them walked back the length of the crowded concourse without glancing at one another, arriving at the gate and the ordered chaos of boarding all too quickly. Michael looked down at their joined hands, then back up to Robin's face. He let go of the handle of his suitcase and raised his other hand to brush the wisps of hair from in front of her eyes.

"I guess this is the goodbye we didn't get the first time. I missed you, but I suppose you already knew that."

"Michael, I…." She paused and looked away from his face, focusing instead on the ground behind him. "We missed you as well."

Michael closed his eyes, and opened his mouth as if to speak, then suddenly winced as they announced final boarding. With a small smile, he gave Robin's hand one final squeeze and let go, turning to make his way to the attendant checking passports and boarding passes. As he joined the queue he gave a final glance back over his shoulder, but was unsurprised to find she'd gone–melted into the crowd.

He walked on to the plane in a daze and once settled into his seat, exhaled a deep breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding. He began to mull over what he'd just experienced, trying to focus on the details, the small moments and tidbits of information he could take away with him. He was totally unprepared for the rush of thought and emotions that came instead.

It was not that he'd been hanging on for lack of closure or whatever nonsense Doujima had spouted back then, but there was definitely something wrong. Feelings he'd locked away some time before clamored for attention, the internal pressure of it matching the weight he felt as the plane taxied and pushed its way off the ground. It wasn't until they were well into the air, that Michael was able to stop reacting and start thinking, start considering what it was he'd be able to take away from this freak encounter.

* * *

Robin stood at the glass, looking past her own reflection to the lights of the plane pushing away from its berth at the terminal. As they receded into the haze, a dark figure barely discernable from the inky scene outside framed Robin's reflection in the window and she felt a gentle hand at her shoulder.

"Did you accomplish what you needed to?"

She tilted her head back so she could look into the reflected eyes of the much taller figure behind her and said quietly, "I don't know…I got to say goodbye anyway."

"I see. Let's go then."


End file.
